Tony Meade
Active Member
Phil Menzies asked me to see if I could compose a musical version of "The Light in the West" based on the words in the script for episode 1 of season 5. I went away and came up with this pretty quickly, and really like how it turned out. You can listen to, or download, the mp3 at this link:
The concept of my treatment was to make it folky and down to earth, the way that the people of Bëor are at this time. Also, I kind of feel like Bëor is something of a prophet to his people, leading them to the promised land like Moses, so the song has a slightly gospel, call and response feel. It is also in 6/8 time, which is associated with Irish sea shanties, and it seemed appropriate for a people on the move.
The "verses" are sung by the individual characters, while the "choruses" are sung by the people as a whole. This is in keeping with the origin of those terms, in which an audience would sing the repeating refrains as a group, hence the term "chorus". I've also maintained the original words about 95%, though I had to massage the odd word to make it fit with the musical rhythm.
This version is done with just acoustic guitar and the vocal, but the final version could be done with other folk or classical instruments, and could also be sped up or slowed down. L:et me know what you think of this first go! 🙂
The concept of my treatment was to make it folky and down to earth, the way that the people of Bëor are at this time. Also, I kind of feel like Bëor is something of a prophet to his people, leading them to the promised land like Moses, so the song has a slightly gospel, call and response feel. It is also in 6/8 time, which is associated with Irish sea shanties, and it seemed appropriate for a people on the move.
The "verses" are sung by the individual characters, while the "choruses" are sung by the people as a whole. This is in keeping with the origin of those terms, in which an audience would sing the repeating refrains as a group, hence the term "chorus". I've also maintained the original words about 95%, though I had to massage the odd word to make it fit with the musical rhythm.
This version is done with just acoustic guitar and the vocal, but the final version could be done with other folk or classical instruments, and could also be sped up or slowed down. L:et me know what you think of this first go! 🙂
